Las Vegas makes local scene

Sin City will descend on Laguna Beach next month when Laguna Art Museum debuts its new show, “Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland,” on March 9.

The exhibit premiered at the Las Vegas Museum of Art, where it was attended by Laguna Art Museum Director Bolton Colburn.

“It’s a spectacular show,” he said. “We saw some advance information prior to the opening, and we thought it would be a nice fit for Laguna Art Museum. A lot of it has to do with the influence Dave Hickey has had on the contemporary scene, especially on the West Coast. He’s helped to build this contemporary art scene in Las Vegas.”

Hickey, a famed art critic and curator, is also a recent recipient of the venerated MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

He has organized the show around 26 artists who studied with him between 1990 and 2001, when he taught art theory and criticism at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada.

He launched the careers of many of the students, who have spread throughout the world following their education with him.

Hickey described his students as “adventuresome, cosmopolitan, self-sufficient and indifferent to parental insight.”

“As a result of their industry and courage, some things that happen in Vegas don’t stay in Vegas,” he said. “They go out and change the world.”

Hickey will lecture on the show at 1 p.m. March 9.

A highlight in the show is a salient, anachronistic work by James Gobel of prating coxcombs dining on decadent desserts. The work looks like an oil painting from far away, but approaching it, one sees that it’s made of felt and yarn that are glued to the “canvas.”

Sherin Guirguis uses a large panel of masonite, popular with Charles and Ray Eames in their Nuclear Age designs, to create a three-dimensional repeat image evocative of the duo’s famous chairs.

“A lot of their work and a lot of Dave’s theories have to do with a reexamination and reimagining of postmodernist thoughts, particularly as they pertain to the ’50s and ’60s,” Colburn said.

The show’s artists took the modernist aesthetics of the period and reshaped them for their own purposes, he added.

“A lot of these artists are really prominent internationally and in Los Angeles right now, but most of them haven’t been seen in Orange County,” Colburn said; he hopes to bring the local art community up to speed on what’s been going on across the state line. There are a lot of contemporary collectors who have been very excited about bringing the show here,” Colburn said.

“There’s this connection between Las Vegas and Laguna Beach, and with Orange County in general.”

Colburn said many Las Vegas residents, from casino owners to middle-class workers, have second homes in Orange County. Prominent local sculptor Louis Longi, who has a Laguna Beach studio, was raised in Las Vegas and went to college there, Colburn said.

“It’ll be somewhat provocative to do something on Las Vegas here,” Colburn said. “I’ve been talking to a lot of people on how important Las Vegas has become, and also how it’s figured in as sort of the eastern edge, I think, of a West Coast aesthetic. I think what Dave has done there is remarkable — well worth looking at.”

Also showing at the museum’s will be a juried exhibition of works from the Boys and Girls Clubs of America’s Pacific Regional Fine Arts Competition, from March 9-22.

Who: Laguna Art Museum

What: “Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland”

When: March 9 to June 1; Dave Hickey lecture 1 p.m. March 9

Where: 307 Cliff Drive

Information: www.lagunaartmuseum.org or (949) 494-8971